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THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



By HIRAM BINGHAM 



Reprint from The Yale Review, January, 1922 



Copyright by the Yale Publishing Association, New Haven, Conn. 




THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt, by Corinne Roosevelt 

Robinson, Charles Scribners Sons. 
Theodore Roosevelt and his Time, by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, 

2 vols., Charles Scribners Sons. 
Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to his Children, edited by Joseph 

Bucklin Bishop, Charles Scribners Sons. 
Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, by Lawrence F. Abbott, 

Boubleday, Page & Co. 
The Life of Theodore Roosevelt, by William Draper Lewis, 

John C. Winston Co. 
Theodore Roosevelt, by William Roscoe Thayer, Houghton 

Mifflin Co. 
Talks with T. R., by John J. Leary, Jr., Houghton Mifflin Co. 

It will be remembered that the best speech at the Republican 
Convention of 1920, in Chicago, was made by a woman — some- 
what to the surprise of those who had not followed Mrs. Corinne 
Roosevelt Robinson's career. Her admiration for her great brother 
led her to make herself thoroughly familiar with American history 

Reprint from The Yale Review, January, 1922. 

Copyright by the Yale Publishing Association, New Haven, Conn. 



2 THE YALE REVIEW 

and politics. Her own sense of humor and love of the virile virtues 
enabled her to compel admiration and attention. Her brother 
greatly trusted her. More than this, he had for her a tremendous 
affection. He found her to be a good sport and no quitter. Not the 
least interesting part of her book is the glimpse it gives into the 
character of the author herself, a very real person. Nevertheless, 
no other book has given us so much that is new about Theodore 
Roosevelt. There are many intimate stories of his home life which 
will be warmly welcomed by those who worship his memory. 

One of the traits which has endeared him to America was his 
whole-hearted devotion to his family. He felt that anything which 
struck at family life was a blow at the roots of all that is best in 
our civilization. In the midst of his strenuous life as President, he 
wrote his sister, "We have been a great deal with the children." 
He was not one of those fathers who no sooner get their boys back 
from boarding-school than they send them off for someone else 
to enjoy in the summer time. His first half hour in the morning 
"always belonged to the children." "Questions and answers about 
their school life, their recreation when out of school, etc., were 
interspersed with various fascinating details told for their special 
edification." In "My Brother" we have striking evidence of his 
devotion to his sisters. His though tfulness for them in the midst 
of his strenuous life was extraordinary. Men of genius do not 
always remember to invite their sisters to share in their triumphs 
and honors. He apparently never forgot. No wonder they thought 
him "the great sharer." 

Mrs. Robinson is a believer in the importance of inherited traits: 
"The stability and wisdom of the old Dutch blood, the gaiety and 
abandon of the Irish strain that came through the female side 
of his father's people, and on his mother's side the great loyalty of 
the Scotch and the fiery self-devotion of the French Huguenot 
martyrs, mixed as it was with the light touch which shows in 
French blood of whatever strain — all this combined to make of 
the boy born of so varied an ancestry one who was akin to all 
human nature." No one, since Jacob Riis published his "Roosevelt, 
the Citizen," has thrown so much light on Theodore Roosevelt's 
father, " a man of great persistence and determination of char- 
acter," with the power of interesting himself in many things out- 
side of his own special interests, "who could, by the most delicate 



Giffc 

-.uthor 

JAM 13 1922 



AMONG THE NEW BOOKS 3 

and comprehending sympathy, make himself a factor in the lives 
of any number of other human beings," a father "who never lost 
a chance of bringing into the lives of his children some worth-while 
memory." 

The more one studies Roosevelt's life the more one is amazed 
at the number and variety of things which he found time to do 
and did well. His vitality and energy were enormous, yet they 
were due largely to his own dogged determination that they should 
be so. His recreations were strenuous. It did not appear to be 
necessary for him to relax. The marvel increases every time one 
reads of the fragile little boy who grew up so handicapped by ill 
health as to be unable to stand ordinary school life. At eleven his 
mother said to him: "Theodore, you have the mind but you have 
not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot 
go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudg- 
ery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." In reply he 
said, "I will make my body," and he became the foremost advo- 
cate of the strenuous life. When the boy of eighteen left Oyster 
Bay in 1876 to enter college, he took with him as his heritage not 
only keen joy in life but a sense of duty to be performed, of higher 
resolve " to be squared with practical and effective action, all of 
which had been part of the teaching of his father." He was "a 
corking boxer," yet he taught regularly in the Cambridge Sunday 
School. He wrote many volumes of history. He loved zoology and 
took front rank as an ornithologist. He adored "the wonderful 
ringing lines of Kipling," and was also familiar with American 
poetry. In the midst of the war, when invited by Mrs. Robinson 
to meet some of the members of the Poetry Society of America, 
he showed a knowledge of modern American verse which amazed 
even his sister. He quoted with special pleasure a sarcastic squib 
which Arthur Guiterman had just published on the navy, apropos 
of Mr. Daniels's attitude — "We are sitting, with our knitting, 
on the twelve inch guns!" Even in college he had "indulged in a 
luxury," so he wrote his mother, " in buying The Library of British 
Poets." It was in a letter to a poet. Mistral, that Roosevelt said: 
"... courage and endurance, love of wife and child, love of 
home and country, love of lover for sweetheart, love of beauty in 
man's work and in nature, love and emulation of daring and of 
lofty endeavor, the homely work-a-day virtues and the heroic 



4 THE YALE REVIEW 

virtues, ... if these are lacking, no piled-up riches, no roaring, 
clanging industrialism, no feverish and many-sided activity shall 
avail either the individual or the nation." This letter, as Mrs. 
Robinson says, truly expresses the spirit which permeated his whole 
life. No other biographer has given us such a vivid picture of 
"Theodore Roosevelt, the loving brother, the humorous philoso- 
pher, the acute politician." 

In the early spring of 191 8, Roosevelt turned over to Mr. 
Joseph Bucklin Bishop, "for exclusive use, all his personal and 
official correspondence . . . relating to his public career." Copies 
"have been preserved" of some 150,000 letters that Roosevelt 
wrote. Surely, no biographer of modern times was ever given such 
an opportunity. It is unfortunate that Mr. Bishop was not a trained 
historian. As a New York newspaper man for thirty-five years, 
and as Secretary of the Isthmian Canal Commission for ten years, 
his experience had scarcely been of the kind to enable him to 
digest thoroughly the enormous mass of that precious correspond- 
ence, and make of the result a vivid cohesive narrative. Further- 
more, such a task would have required far more time than was 
given to the preparation of these volumes. 

The first twenty years of Roosevelt's career, from the time he 
ran for the New York Legislature in 1881 until he entered the 
White House in 1901, are allotted one hundred and fifty pages, or 
less than one-sixth of the whole. More than three hundred pages 
are assigned to the ten years after he retired from the Presidency. 
Mr. Bishop has not attempted to illumine, from Roosevelt's 
letters, his life as state law-maker, ranchman. Civil Service Com- 
missioner, or Police Commissioner. Of all the letters written in 
those sixteen years, Mr. Bishop has given us extracts from only 
eight, although he finds space to quote from newspapers more 
than thirty times. Furthermore, he feels obliged to refer anony- 
mously to some of Roosevelt's most bitter opponents, both politi- 
cal and editorial. To tell a story of "the most pernicious and 
rascally specimen of his class and time," without indicating who is 
meant, is unfortunate. And, surely, there can be no valid reason 
for so frequently failing to give the names of newspapers from 
which quotations are taken. There are some serious omissions 
which can be remedied in later editions. No mention is made of the 
fact that three of John Hay's letters to Theodore Roosevelt, here 



AMONG THE NEW BOOKS 5 

given in full, had already been published in Thayer's "Life of 
Hay." There is no chronology of Theodore Roosevelt's public 
career. There is no bibliography of his published works. 

Nevertheless, one cannot help welcoming much that is in these 
volumes. The charming letters to Sir George Trevelyan, with 
whom Roosevelt maintained an intimate correspondence for many 
years, "From Khartoum to London," and the chapter on the 
"Russo-Japanese Conference" are of great value. Of particular in- 
terest is the quotation from Lord Bryce, who wrote, at the close of 
the Spanish-American War, "What I hope you will do is to have 
a healthy despotism governing these tropical semi-savages, and 
even the Spanish Creoles." It is surely significant to find the dis- 
tinguished author of "Modern Democracies" saying of the Fili- 
pinos, "No talk of suffrage or any such constitutional privileges 
for them, but steady government by the firmest, most honest man 
you can find." One is reminded of Roosevelt's own words, many 
years later, quoted by Mr. Lawrence Abbott: "I will never advo- 
cate self-government for a people so long as their self-government 
means crime, violence, and extortion, corruption within, lawless- 
ness among themselves and toward others." "When a people treat 
assassination as the corner-stone of self-government, they forfeit 
all right to be treated as worthy of self-government." 

Of the details of Roosevelt's family life the world knew little 
during his lifetime. No one was better aware than he of the value 
of publicity; few public men have used it as wisely and skilfully 
as he did; yet he always endeavored to keep his family doings out 
of the newspapers. Reporters who broke that rule were likely to 
receive short shrift at his hands. As Mr. Bishop has well said: 
"Deep and abiding love of children, of family, of home, was the 
dominating passion of his life." There is abundant evidence for 
this in the charming letters which this devoted father and whole- 
hearted companion found time to send them in the midst of the 
pressure of great public duties. Even as a college boy he had taken 
affectionate pains "to keep his mother informed about all his 
activities, intellectual, physical, and social." The "Letters to his 
Children" remind one of certain great paintings where the artist 
gives a glimpse of an ideal home. They are filled with affection, 
love of animals, love of out-of-doors, love of happy activities. The 
occasional drawings add zest, just as they do to Thackeray's 



6 THE YALE REVIEW 

letters. Parents who have children at boarding-school will enjoy 
the letters to his boys at Groton, particularly to one who is anx- 
ious to play football: " I do not in the least object to your getting 
smashed if it is for an object that is worth while. . . . But I 
think it a little silly to run any imminent risk of a serious smash 
simply to play on the second squad instead of the third. ... I 
want to make the risk to a certain accident commensurate with 
the object gained." 

One is not accustomed to think of Roosevelt as a person who 
carefully weighed the importance of an object before taking a 
great risk. Yet Mr. Lawrence Abbott, who knew him intimately 
for years, was impressed by Roosevelt's attention to "personal 
preparedness." "He studied, he read, he consulted, he thought, 
he deliberated, he put himself in the hands of trainers, so to 
speak — but when the time for action came he was on his toes, 
ready to jump at the word 'go.'" Theodore Roosevelt certainly 
was impetuous, yet it was the impetuosity of the trained sprinter, 
who has been preparing for months to make a sudden and terrific 
dash. The chief value of Mr. Abbott's book lies in the entertaining 
account of Roosevelt's African and European tour. Mr. Abbott 
was Theodore Roosevelt's "secretary" in Egypt and Europe in 
1910, and consequently had an unusual opportunity for close 
observation. He gives many charming little pictures of this trip, 
such as the dismay of the imperial party at Potsdam when " the 
Colonel " talked too long with the Kaiser. 

After Roosevelt's return from Europe, he became the centre of 
the protest against conservatism. It is essentially in him as "the 
Founder of a New Party" that Dean Lewis is interested. He re- 
gards Roosevelt's determination to form an independent party as 
the most important decision of his life, although he admits that 
this decision was made when "he was mad, mad clean through." 
The first half of Dean Lewis's book is rather heavy and labored. 
It becomes more readable towards the end, where the author, an 
ardent Progressive, undertakes an ex parte defense of his chief. 

Mr. William Roscoe Thayer has given us a delightful "intimate 
biography." A college-mate at Harvard, Mr. Thayer knew Theo- 
dore Roosevelt for forty years, and, although continually differ- 
ing with him politically, always maintained for him a warm per- 
sonal friendship. When a trained biographer, the master of a 



AMONG THE NEW BOOKS 7 

delightful English style, sits down to write, con amore^ the memoir 
of a friend whom he has known all his life, the result is likely to be 
satisfactory. There is nothing disappointing about Mr. Thayer's 
book except that it is not longer. One cannot help wishing that he 
had been selected to do for the letters of Roosevelt what he did 
for those of John Hay. 

Mr. John J. Leary, Jr. was a member of Roosevelt's "newspaper 
cabinet" during the last five years of his life. Fortunately it was 
Mr. Leary's habit to transcribe carefully his "talks with T. R. " 
He has given us a picture of the greatest of our Elder Statesmen at 
a time when Roosevelt had no official position, was thwarted in 
his efforts to serve his country, and yet was full of zeal for the 
cause of the Allies and for the honor of America. Into this modern 
Boswell one can dip anywhere and be sure of enjoyment. Like 
Dr. Johnson, Colonel Roosevelt was often pungent in conversation. 
After his visit to Washington in April, 191 7, he came back to 
Oyster Bay and gave a clear picture of "thekind of man Mr. Wilson 
wants about him." Secretary Baker "will do exactly what Mr. 
Wilson tells him to do, he will think exactly as Mr. Wilson wants 
him to think, and when Mr. Wilson changes his mind, he will 
change with him." (Was not Secretary Lansing later dismissed 
because his mind did not "willingly go along" with Mr. Wilson's?) 
The kind of man that Theodore Roosevelt "wanted about him" 
was Mr. Root, who, asT. R. said, " would give persistent battle for 
his viewpoint. He was a most dogged fighter. But his frankness, 
his outspokenness, were of great help in making me see all sides 
of a question. . . . The honest and intelligent critic I welcome, 
always welcomed, and always will welcome." In the words of 
President Harding, Theodore Roosevelt was ever " the patriotic 
sentinel, pacing the parapet of the Republic, alert to danger and 
every menace; in love with duty and service, and always unafraid.'* 

Hiram Bingham. 
Yale University. 



§4 W 



